fri 11/07/2025

pop

Reissue CDs Weekly: Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros, The Gary Burton Quartet, Heavy Metal Kids, Boyce & Hart

 Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros: Global A Go-Go, StreetcoreLisa-Marie FerlaAs well as marking the 10th anniversary of Joe Strummer's death, 2012 would also have been the year the legendary Clash frontman turned 60. The reissue of these two...

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CD: P!nk - The Truth About Love

It's hard to hear P!nk without thinking of the kind of “punks” that scowl in the corners of American high-school movies, possibly befriending some “nerds”, revealing a sensitive side, and/or standing up to a “jock” at some crucial point in the plot...

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Lady Gaga, Twickenham Stadium

After Lady Gaga's concert at Twickenham last night, I asked some of the Little Monsters scurrying back to the station the name of the last song she had sung. The song she sang right after declaring that she had to bring the evening to an early end....

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Lee "Scratch" Perry, Cud, Taj Mahal, David Cassidy

Lee “Scratch” Perry and Friends: Disco Devil - The Jamaican DiscomixesThomas H GreenAs bass culture conquers the musical universe, with even Justin Bieber diving into dubstep waters and gnarly electro-goth Skrillex one of the biggest earning new...

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Lady Gaga: Back to the Future

Lady Gaga arrives in the UK this weekend to play two huge shows at Twickenham Stadium, before moving on to Manchester. Today, she is the biggest pop star in the world. Three years ago she was in the final stages of a highly orchestrated campaign...

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CD: David Byrne & St. Vincent - Love This Giant

There's a lot that's right with this album. Love This Giant sounds like Talking Heads for one, suggesting that David Byrne has made his peace with what made him great in the first place, and has seemingly stopped his slide into becoming a...

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CD: Tender Trap - Ten Songs About Girls

Before acid house came along and saved our souls, there was no nation-embracing socio-musical phenomenon to latch onto. Outside of mainstream pop and niche heavy metal, there was hip hop, but that was adamantly American at the time, there was retro...

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Ride, Juliette Gréco, Krzysztof Komeda, Priscilla Paris

Ride: Going Blank AgainKieron TylerWhen Oxfordshire’s Ride arrived in the shops via Creation Records, they were the sonic little brothers to label-mates My Bloody Valentine. But their second album, 1992’s Going Blank Again, ploughed its own path,...

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CD: Owl City - The Midsummer Station

Stumbling across the perfect pop hit must be its own kind of curse. It’s been two and a half years since Owl City’s “Fireflies” shot its way into the charts, seemingly from nowhere. With its lush, quirky melodies and wistful, lovelorn lyrics, Adam...

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Blur, Hyde Park

Even as London partied, the talk was already about legacy. And as Blur took the stage on a Best of British bill that impressively included New Order and The Specials, the open secret that this may have been their last ever gig – “certainly in this...

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Interview: 10 Questions for Nik Kershaw

Nik Kershaw (b 1958) is best known for a run of hits in the mid-Eighties, songs such as “Wouldn’t It Be Good”, “I Won’t Let The Sun Go Down on Me”, “The Riddle” and “Wide Boy”. He achieved international success and played Live Aid in 1985. Raised in...

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Marc Almond, Shepherd's Bush Empire

The first time I interviewed Marc Almond back in the late 1980s he had a pet snake with him, just one of the many things that sets him apart from today's stars. These days the only reptiles one sees around chart-toppers are the publicists. Almond...

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